Were there age limits for presidents as there are for other jobs, Biden and the Democrats would not have faced the dilemma that seemed poised to divide and derail the Democratic Party’s run for the White House. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
US President Joe Biden’s exit from the presidential race has been described by some as shocking. It is not shocking. What is surprising is that it took him so long to drop out.
Biden’s inability, and those of the people around him, to recognise and accept the toll that life has taken on him put the Democratic Party in an untenable situation. It had caused underground conflict in the party for some time but, after what is now widely termed his “disastrous” debate with Trump on 27 June, that conflict became public.
Biden’s poor performance, incoherence, deer-caught-in-the-light stares and meandering mumblings during the debate also pushed many journalists and donors to begin to insist that he step back.
Sixty percent of Democrats polled said they wanted Biden to withdraw from the presidential race. More than 30 Democratic legislators came out publicly urging him to drop out of the presidential race. Democrats were worried that if Biden stayed on the ticket not only would he lose to Trump but it would also lead to Democrats losing their hold on the Senate and failing to regain the House of Representatives.
This is not the first time that the US has had a president in office whose mental faculties have been questioned. The same thing happened towards the end of Ronald Reagan’s presidency.
In our culture talking about age and ageing is a sensitive topic. Age is associated with wisdom and there is often a degree of reverence for the aged. Questioning a person’s mental acuity or physical capabilities as a result of this natural process is often taboo.
Although the cult of youth can be as irrational as the sort of deference for age that results in the gerontocracies that we see in some societies, we have to accept that ageing is an inevitable and, at times, difficult process.
We are all in the process of ageing; once out of the initial flush of youth new pains and creases appear each year; things that once came easily become less effortless.
But there are people who are vital well into old age, and others whose decline starts much earlier. This makes drawing fixed lines demarcating retirement ages difficult. In most countries retirement is enforced in many lines of work, usually between 60 and 65 years of age.
In some countries exceptions are made in certain areas of work. In the US tenured academics and judges can work until they deem it appropriate to retire. This has enabled some brilliant minds to keep contributing well past 65, but there are professors and judges who have stayed on too long.
Faced with ageing populations and low birth rates, some European countries are poised to increase their retirement age to 67 years. In South Africa the retirement age is either 60 or 65 years depending on the sector, with people being eligible for early retirement from 55 years of age. There is no law governing the retirement age.
And there is no retirement age for politicians. A number of countries have heads of state and government that are way past what is seen as the age of retirement. At 81 years old Biden is the oldest president that the US has ever had. He is much younger than his Cameroonian counterpart, Paul Biya, who is 91 years old and has been in power since 1982.
Biden’s foes, Vladimir Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping of China, are 71 and 70 years respectively, both younger than the age Biden was when he took office almost four years ago. Nelson Mandela was 75 when he became president of South Africa. Today many of our public representatives in parliament, and quite a few of our cabinet ministers are well over what is considered South Africa’s retirement age. In some cases it is not clear that they are still contributing as they once did.
Biden’s 21 July announcement that he will not be running again has turned the US presidential race on its head. The last time a sitting president who could have run for a second term and did not do so was in 1968, when Lyndon Johnson announced that he would not seek re-election nor would he accept a nomination by the Democratic Party. Johnson made his announcement in March of that year with enough time for the party primaries to still proceed as normal.
This time around the primary season is already over and so Biden’s announcement has thrown a spanner into the works. Although Biden’s endorsement of his vice-president, Kamala Harris, has been welcomed by some, others have worried that it may undermine the democratic process through which nominees are usually chosen.
From 19 to 22 August, the Democratic National Committee will have its convention in Chicago to formally elect the Democratic presidential nominee. Harris will have to win the full support of the committee and might well have to contend with a contestation for a nomination from the floor.
Concerns have also been raised that there are only four months until the 5 November elections. This should not be a worry, though. Most countries around the world do not have the long electioneering period that the US has, yet they still manage to do all the necessary electioneering and get their message across. The date for South Africa’s 29 May election for instance was announced on 29 February, a mere three months before the election. A shorter electioneering period might actually be a godsend because it will keep people more engaged and lessen the opportunities for the increasingly vicious political attacks that the US election period is known for.
Given the current state of polarisation in the US, a woman, and one of colour, will escalate Trump’s attempt to incite the prejudices of his base. Harris has an uphill battle ahead of her. She will need a strong running mate and one that will appease fears about her status as a black woman in a country still haunted by its racist demons. Gavin Newson, the governor of California, and Josh Shapiro, the Pennsylvania governor, are strong contenders to be her running-mates.
Were there age limits for presidents as there are for other jobs, Biden and the Democrats would not have faced the dilemma that seemed poised to divide and derail the Democratic Party’s run for the White House. In a country where more than 65% of the population is under the age of 45, you would have imagined that the US would have been able to field much younger candidates than Biden and Trump.
Biden had a long career as a US lawmaker, becoming the senator for Delaware at the age of 29 and holding that position for 36 years until he became vice-president to Barack Obama, and then the 46th president of the US. Having had such an illustrious career it must have been difficult to accept that he is at the end of his political life. But Mandela stood down after one term, and Biden should have had the wisdom to do the same.
Good leadership always means building new leaders, and giving space to new leaders. There is a need for innovation, new ideas and for people that relate to the generations of the future better than a person past their prime might. It is therefore important for older politicians to know when to pass on the torch to a younger generation, and to realise that this is part of the legacy they leave behind.
We need to get to a place where we accept that age comes for all of us. For some of us the hammer of time falls earlier than for others. But when our facilities start to slip away this must be faced. Denial is not a credible response.
When people have served their countries and contributed to society it is not disrespectful or in any way to trivialise all their previous work to recognise that the time has come for them to step aside.
This is perhaps particularly important on the African continent, which has the youngest population in the world. Political parties and governments should work to bring in younger people, to train them and to give them space to grow. There needs to be a smooth transition between generations and an understanding that time, in the end, comes for all of us. Holding on too tightly might destroy what we have done before and our lapses as we age become what we are remembered for.
Nontobeko Hlela is a research fellow with the Institute for Pan African Thought & Conversation and a PhD candidate in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Johannesburg.